TODD's NOTES

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Chaos

 

Chaos (original working title "K-OS") started out back in 1994 when I was teaching myself how to use eMagic's Logic sequencer software (since acquired by Apple). I needed some MIDI tracks to play around with so I came up with the main verse arpeggio and pre-chorus whole-tone piano lines. Not long after, Matt independently wrote a nice progression on piano that we realized would work very nicely as an accompanying chorus for the bits I already had, and together we now had the skeleton of a song.

Fast-forward a year or two. I was learning the keyboard solo to Genesis' "Fading Lights" (We Can't Dance, 1992), which used the Korg Wavestation's "Ski Jam" patch. I got the idea for the synth leads over the verses (including some very basic Banks-style inter-hand syncopation toward the end), along with the extended strings outro section (Wavestation "Analog Strings" patch).

 

At this point in time, the band would occasionally play this live, and even though there were no lyrics, the crowds still seemed to enjoy it. It was also good to hear it performed with live drums, which had a significant impact on what you hear today.

 

The last development of the song in this era was a very minor one. Matt and I were in the studio one day, and he had come up with some nice TR-808 accent parts for the ending strings which are still there today in reduced form.

 

Then the band ended, and the song sat on the shelf until November 2021.

 

When we started talking about writing again, I immediately knew that Chaos would be the first thing that I would tackle. Within a month or so, I was right back where we left off, only now with the full flexibility of a modern DAW recording environment.

 

Since then, the song has evolved even more. It now has vocal melodies and lyrics, a more complete and rounded-out structure, a more sophisticated arrangement, several subtle final production touches that make it a complete piece, and a few Easter eggs. Amazingly, the whole song is in 4/4.

 

Bad Bitch

 

Bad Bitch started out in the late 90s as a bit titled "Galaxy Man" of somewhat unknown origin and in a different time signature. It was the bit Matt latched onto when we started this whole process. Initially, he simply converted what was there into 4/4 but not long after completely remade the basic song, complete with the shimmering Strymon guitar and breathy synth at the beginning, along with the swank percussion loop that runs throughout. What appealed to me about the song was that it was heavier in spots than what we usually wrote, and maybe we could do something interesting with that. We had a lot of back and forth to fine-tune the basic structure, even getting some solid suggestions such as adding the double-time section before the bridge from folks just outside of the inner circle like our long-time light man and sort-of fourth member, Syb.

 

Once the basic structure was settled, it began to wear on me that the song was on the short side and there was more to say. I realized that there was a recurring theme in the song of a descending chromatic line from D to B and that was something that needed to be explored. But how to get there?

 

Easy. Let's go take the beginning and use it to lay the foundation for the second half. Recreating the beginning was relatively straightforward but why do everything exactly the same way as earlier in the song? That's when I thought it would be cool to take the original guitar verse part and mix it up. I rewrote the original line in retrograde, which essentially means reversing the melody. Then I recorded that melody and reversed the resulting audio. Voila! Forward melody with but reverse audio and very unique. I also happened to do some editing that resulted in a very short guitar sample that sounded more like a drum and fits as a nice accent in multiple places in the second half of the song. Yes, that sound you hear is actually a guitar. Tom Scholz would be proud. Maybe. What about the TR-808 you ask? Yeah, that was basically lifted, but I will leave the question of from where as an exercise for the reader.

 

I am not sure how I landed on the start of the second half, but I came up with a nice set of chords on the Mellotron that centered around the aforementioned chromatic D to B progression but used chords that hadn't already been present in the song. It was nice but needed more flavor. So, I used a technique I roughly call "mirror chords" to write the second half. Mirror chords are similarly voiced but different chords. A couple of simple examples are Cmaj7 and G6 and Bmin7 and D (see, for example, the track "skyrocketstereo" from the Nepenthe album Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt). I won't go into the chords here but suffice it to say they are related in this way. The connection between the two sets of chords was provided by a turn-around that I had been experimenting with but had to stagger the notes over the whole bar to get the resolution to work correctly and also draw out the tension. Another technique used here is moving only one of two notes per chord change. I believe this is a Tony Banks kind of thing. Matt used it earlier when writing the song "Rain" in 1990, which eventually became "Whisper" on this album. Anyway, so now I had a unique chord progression, and this time Matt suggested we end it by playing it with half the duration. Not exactly double-time as above but similar. Early versions really focused around the Mellotron strings and an accompanying Mellotron flute melody. It was nice but didn’t really work to further the song as much as we would have liked. The section needed to build as it progressed. I started toying with some guitar arpeggios to go along with the strings, while Matt started writing an ARP keyboard solo and together they started bringing the section to life. For the half-duration part I came up with a nice guitar melody we called “the story” because of what it does for the section. I then wrote a harmony part to go with the second half, which helped push the song into the next bit…

 

Ok, now what? My main thought was it had to be heavy. Like many musicians, I have a catalog of bits for which I never found a home. Listening back to various audio segments, I found a bit I wrote when I was learning the software Rebirth back in the early 2000s titled "Rebirf funk" (Rebirth was basically a software Roland TB-303 that connected to Logic using something called "ReWire"). It had some heaviness, a close tempo, and was the right key. It provided a way to couple a reprise of the first heavy section as an outro with the bridge, but it wasn't an exact fit for the bridge. After some more experimentation, I wrote the heavy chromatic connecting chord progression that is used to transition between the two sections. Some strategic and creative use of drum loops were used to help glue it all together.  All that said, what really pulls things together here is the starting guitar solo, which is played by my good mate Mike Zaffarese. We’ve known each other as friends and musicians for over 30 years but never recorded together. I was stuck trying to figure out this piece of the puzzle and thought it would be a great opportunity to get involved, which he gladly accepted. The results speak for themselves.

 

Part of what I think makes this section work is the augmented 4th (or diminished 5th, take your pick)/perfect 5th tension, a bit like Genesis’ “Dance on a Volcano” (Trick of the Tail, 1976),  that takes place strategically through the section and culminates in a combined ARP/guitar solo that ushers in a reprise of the end of the first section.

 

Some things to listen for in this section:

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• The pushing combined kick and snare on 1 in the tension sections were inspired by Yes’ Alan White (example: “Starship Trooper” on the 9012Live video).

• The panning guitar helps reveal interesting different parts as it moves across the stereo field.

• How the space changes over time.

• When things go subsonic.

• The combined keyboard/guitar solo - some Dream Theater inspiration in there somewhere.

 

Marvelous World (Losing Season)

 

MWLS (for short) started out in the late 90s as a simple acoustic waltz-style piece. It was something I was working on as the band was coming to an end. I recall working on it with Matt either in the studio or at his apartment around 1999, and he came up with the title Marvelous World (details remain murky and perhaps ironic too). Over the years I never developed the song past the basic acoustic guitar parts and a simple vocal melody on piano.

 

One thing that is unique to me about it is that the main verse chord progression is built around D/Bb/C. Most of the time when these chords are used together, the D is minor, whereas in this case the D is major and which the F#/F interplay is intentionally taken advantage of. Perhaps the use of maj7s on the Bb and C helps in making it work too.

 

Fans of the greatest teen anthem movie of the 1980s should recognize what inspired the chorus. Speaking of the chorus, the acoustic guitars are recorded using a technique I used on several previous recordings that I learned from longtime associate and keyboard god Dan Vitco way back in 1991, and he borrowed from early and mid-era Genesis. Very roughly, you take a chord progression, arpeggiate it in one register and then write a second variation in another register with a different starting point, and then you track them to be played simultaneously with a bit of stereo separation. The result is a very beautiful harmonized sound that often hints at a 12-string but not exactly and is very unique. Extra points are awarded for subtle rhythm changes between the parts and not following a strict harmonic interval between the two parts. I also used this technique for the middle section of Whisper. Another interesting thing about the choruses is that each one is a different length. The first is one time through, the second is one-and-a-half times through, and the last is two times through. This was not done intentionally but rather simply because it made sense with the flow of the song.

 

One of the things I struggled with on this song was how to make the pauses between the verses and choruses work in a musical way. When I handed the basic structure over to Matt, he added a drum loop to help him with the timing and, save for a few strategic places where it made sense to remove, it stuck and remains in place today, providing some overall glue that helps hold things together.

 

The bridge started out as a simple arpeggiated section, fairly redundant and uninteresting. I was thrilled when Matt sent me the initial versions of the choir singing over the lonely guitar part. It added an entirely new dimension. I took that and thought it might be cool to then have a string quartet and some horns doing something similar for the second half, making use of one of the original piano vocal melodies I wrote way back when. Last, I really like how the tempo and time signatures are consistent throughout the whole song, but the beginning and end of the bridge have a completely different feel. Up until the string quartet ends, the feel is very laid back, a soft three feel if you will, but when it transitions back to the piano, the bass, keyboards, and cajon give it a more straight-ahead three feel that serves to drive and connect the song back to the final chorus with purpose.

 

Originally the song faded out on the last chorus but never really felt complete. I liked the idea of a big ending, reminiscent of the grandiose middle section of Yes' "And You And I" and set out to write something in that vein based on the MWLS chorus. I started auditioning keyboard sounds and after doing that for some time, started getting parts down in the DAW only to realize several hours later that everything was actually based on the verse and not the chorus! No matter - I was extremely happy with how well it worked. With much respect to Brett, and well before we started working with him, I was very fond of the melodic interplay of the main melody alternately played both on guitar and keyboards at the end of echolyn's "Empyrean Views" (from I Heard You Listening). While definitely simpler than that example, I tried to achieve at least a glimpse of it with the end section guitar and keyboard interplay, both of which are based on the original piano vocal melody mentioned earlier.

 

And then there was Dan. I have kept in fairly regular touch with him over the years and even more so recently as we have gained momentum on this project. I am not ashamed to admit that I may have done some begging for his involvement but, as you can hear, the result speaks for itself. Initially, the only keyboards were some hacky piano in the bridge and a light organ in the last chorus that was inspired by the song "Scattered Black and Whites" by Elbow (Asleep in the Back). Dan took the song and, in my opinion, did a clinic on theme and variation with the resulting keyboards taking the song to an entirely new level. So much so that when I listened to what he came up with I literally felt like I was hearing the song for the very first time. I can't say much else about the keyboards other than that they speak for themselves.

 

Be on the listen for a couple of easter eggs in this song as well!

 

Paper White 11:16

 

My first (only?) acoustic solo piece as well as my first work in DADGAD. Played a single time live back in 1998 or 1999. For Ray.

 

Whisper

 

Whisper began back in 1990 as a song titled "Rain." It was a long piece in D minor built around one or two note changes per chord as described previously under "Bad Bitch." It was pretty good for our abilities at the time. Over time though it became dated, both sonically and lyrically, and was basically put on the shelf and stopped being performed live in 1995. Sometime around 1997 we pulled it out of storage and started playing with the arrangement in conjunction with a simple Phrygian phrase I had lying around since the mid-to-late 1980s. The updated verses were drawn from minor key piano bits that I also had lying around, and everything fit well enough. During rehearsals we spent a significant amount of time working the Phrygian phrase around melodically while also injecting some unexpected time signature changes to make for a pretty interesting instrumental section toward the end. I don't recall how the bridge came about, and while I liked the chord progression, it wasn't implemented very well at the time. We played this version of the song live a few times in 1997 and 1998 with the title "Madeline," but the vocals never gained critical mass, and then we had a personnel change, and it went back on the shelf until 2022.

 

The song that would become "Whisper" was the second track on my agenda and I knew it was going to be a man-eater. It took a significant amount of time to do the preproduction, set up the time signatures and tempo maps, etc. With that done, we started recreating the core basics: bass, rhythm, and lead guitars, and verse keyboards. At that point, Matt took over and added the drums, started writing the lyrics, and most importantly for me, sent me the melody for the "Queen of Diamonds" section, which was the spark I needed to fill in almost everything else.

 

The previous version of the song from the late 1990s had what we called at the time "goth chords" in what is now the "Queen of Diamonds" section of the song. When we picked it back up we realized that these chords really didn't work. So Matt sent me a melody he came up with for this section and I used it to write new keyboard and guitar parts for this section that work much better. The bizarre coincidence of this melody was that it also worked perfectly over the end section instrumental that takes the underlying Phrygian phrase and moves it all over the place.

 

As mentioned above, the verses revolve around a minor arpeggio(ish) line but in three very different flavors: the first (“1954”) is fairly straight-ahead and a bit subdued, the second (“Fever Dream”) is stripped completely bare, while the third (“Louder Than Bombs”) is an in-your-face tour de force. The end of the third verse serves to transition into the guitar solo, which is comprised of two distinct sections. The solo is the original one that I wrote way back in 1990 when the song was titled “Rain” - I even still have the original manuscript! Fun fact: this song does not contain a chorus!

 

The guitar solo winds down into the bridge section (“Mother”). For the acoustic guitars in this section I used the same technique as for MWLS. The instrumentation for the first half of the section is pretty simple with just acoustic guitar, flute, and piano. The second half crescendos into a classic prog wall of sound, with vocal harmonies, bass pedals, a big choir, and Moog lead. What fun!

 

The end instrumental has been significantly improved over the earlier version, particularly with respect to the keyboard parts. As mentioned above, the chords from the "Queen of Diamonds" section are now used here, also replacing the earlier "goth chords." What's especially cool about it to me, and was done quite unintentionally, was that the arrangement gives the first half a very dark, old-school Russian-influenced shanty choir with marching soldiers feel (like something out of "The Hunt for Red October"), which just happened to jibe perfectly with what the lyrics were about. The section switches focus to some excellent synth work by Dan, building to the first of two crescendos. Things then calm down a bit, returning to a more flavorful version of the first verse theme, then transitions into a poly-meter/poly-rhythm with a few different time signatures going on across the various instruments, before hell ultimately breaks loose. The interplay between the lead synth and guitar toward the end sounds more complex than it is due to the difference in time signature between the two parts. Everything then comes back together for a bold reprise of the bridge ("Glory").

 

There are a few Easter eggs in this track as well. See if you can find them all!

 

By the way, if the main Phrygian lick sounds familiar, know that I am not the only person to have come up with it. It was also used almost verbatim by at least two other artists, who I will not name here. That said, I wrote my version way back in the late 1980s so I do not consider it plagiarism nor theft of any sort.

 

Zaff's Fez

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Ah, the good old days. Back in the summer of 1987, I wrote a ridiculous 10-minute instrumental piece titled "Traffic Suite." Recordings still exist. No, you may not hear them. In college a few years later we met the St. Joe’s "Wrecking Crew," one member of which was guitarist Mike Zaffarese, who has since become one of my best mates, with never-ending discussions about the nuances of guitar tones, technique, gear, and related topics. During our college years, we were all great fans of Matt Groening's "Life in Hell" comic strip that appeared in the Thursday edition of the campus newspaper. What do these things have to do with one another? I don’t really remember, but the combination of putting them together somehow resulted in the very short in-your-face instrumental we titled "Zaff's Fez." The Fez part surely comes from the "Life in Hell" characters Jeff and Akbar (Where the elite meet to eat tasty treats!) who both wore fezzes. And "Fez" is obviously almost a palindrome of "Zaff." And Zaff is a great guy so we named a song for him. The music is primarily a small, modified, and highly obnoxious snippet of "Traffic Suite." It opens with a run on a C harmonic minor scale in 4/4 and then switches to an F blues riff in 7/4 followed by a diminished run in 11/4. Add in some angry Hammond organ and Moog lead just for extra bonus. For the record, Zaff is most definitely not obnoxious.